Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:07:39 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Fine Arts :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/fine-arts istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us JAY AKASIE http://www.nysun.com/antiques/sothebys-to-sell-british-guns/84200/ Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Every serious sportsman knows that by late August, the Scottish Highlands offer an array of riches. Grouse season is a couple weeks under way. Deer stalking is at its peak, and the fly-fishing doesn't get any better. Sotheby's annual sale of antique sporting guns at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland is popular this time of year because winning bidders can walk out the door and take to the field with their elegantly engraved rifles and shotguns. City bankers and sundry members of the English... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/billionaire-chandler-establishes-showcase/84190/ Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Billionaire investor Richard Chandler is helping his mother break into Manhattan's clubby art scene by spending up to $4 million on a 14,000-square-foot gallery that will sell her paintings. Mr. Chandler, 49, considers the two-story gallery, set to open this fall, an investment, not a gift. "I have provided a loan," he said in an e-mail. "I anticipate being repaid in the fullness of time." Self-taught artist Ana Tzarev, 72, signed a 10-year lease for the space at 24 W. 57th St., with an... JAY AKASIE http://www.nysun.com/arts/highlights-from-the-scottish-school/84157/ Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The auction world might be busy preparing for the major fall sales, but there's one sign that the dog days of summer aren't over quite yet. Sotheby's holds its Scottish & Sporting Pictures sale at the Gleneagles Hotel on August 26. A laid-back, late-summer event, it has been attracting a diverse crowd of art aficionados to the Highlands for four decades. "Buyers nowadays are more receptive to all eras of British painting. It's a very fun crowd at the Gleneagles," the head of Scottish Pictures... ADAM KIRSCH http://www.nysun.com/arts/lifting-the-veil-jmw-turner-and-john-ruskin/84115/ Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST If the spirit of Joseph Mallord William Turner is looking down on New York these days — possibly from somewhere in the vicinity of the sun, which in his dying days he declared to be God — he must have very mixed feelings. He would be satisfied to see that the show of the season is the Metropolitan Museum's giant exhibition of his work — satisfied, but not surprised. During his immensely productive lifetime (1775-1851), Turner was confident that he would be remembered as one of the greatest... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/hercules-hits-the-metropolitan/84340/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Pure fortuity has brought two artists named Cornelis into the same gallery of the Metropolitan Museum and into the same column of The New York Sun. They are Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (Haarlem, 1562-1638) and Cornelis van Poelenburch (Utrecht, 1594-1667). "Hercules and Achelous" (1590), by the former, and "A Rocky Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs near Ruins" (1630-35), by the latter, are now up at the Met on short-term loan. As such, these two works underscore a delightful, if unsung... LANCE ESPLUND http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-met-installation-heavy-on-provocation-light/84292/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST One of the essential aspects of art is that it transcends its subject matter and culture. In an artwork it is not really important what or who is depicted — or if, as in some works of art, no thing is depicted at all. No matter what it is, where it came from, or who made it, art engages us on many levels across cultures and through millennia. One does not have to believe in Christ, or even in God, to be mystified by Duccio's "Madonna and Child" (c. 1300), a recently acquired masterwork in the... NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT http://www.nysun.com/arts/glimmerglass-times-four-on-an-elizabethan-stage/84297/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The Glimmerglass Opera has four productions on its bill this summer, and each employs a shared backdrop: an elegant facsimile of an Elizabethan theater in pale gray timber. In front of that background, the flats and scenery for each opera float in. Operagoers who attend performances to applaud lavish sets rather than the singing and staging may be disappointed by it, but the ingenious device — which is both artistically apt and economical — successfully unifies the quartet under a single theme... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/domingo-replaces-Alvarez-in-adriana-lecouvreur/84283/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Plácido Domingo will replace Marcelo Álvarez in the role of Maurizio in the Metropolitan Opera's February production of Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur," the organization announced Wednesday. Mr. Domingo made his Met debut in the role 40 years ago, and has since performed the part at the opera house only once, in 1983. Before the casting switch was made, Mr. Domingo was set to conduct this production; in his place, Marco Armiliato will conduct... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/opera-singer-mark-lundberg-dies/84294/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Mark Lundberg, an opera singer whose voice was so versatile he was able to compete as a bass, baritone, and tenor, died at age 50 after a brief illness, his management company said. Lundberg sang bass, then baritone, for many years before making the transition to dramatic tenor roles. He competed at the regional finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions as a bass, baritone, and tenor, according to the Pittsburgh Opera, where Lundberg was to perform the role of Samson in... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/met-to-honor-pavarotti-with-free-concert/84103/ Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The Metropolitan Opera will offer a free concert performance of Verdi's Requiem on September 18 to honor the memory of one of its greatest stars, Luciano Pavarotti, who died last year of pancreatic cancer. Tenor Marcello Giordani will sing the music once made radiant by the Italian tenor, with James Levine on the podium. They will be joined by soprano Barbara Frittoli, mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina, and bass James Morris. Pavarotti sang 378 times at the Met during his career with the New York... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/wisconsin-museum-showcases-lennon-drawings/83911/ Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and Lennon's admirers are so protective of Lennon's legacy they don't want any of his original drawings photographed in full. Some are fragile and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and they don't want them to hit the Internet, where they can be counterfeited. So for the first time the public will get to see 27 pencil and pen drawings along with five lithographs and serigraphs — all authenticated — at the Waukesha County Historical Society Museum... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/qatar-pursues-de-montebello/83989/ Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The outgoing director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, may get more deeply involved in museum development projects in the Middle East. Mr. de Montebello, who will retire at the end of this year or when a successor is named, has already been appointed as a special adviser on NYU Abu Dhabi. He will be involved in visual arts programming and structuring an arts curriculum. But the new executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority, Roger Mandle, acknowledged in an... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/italy-plans-partial-demolition-of-meier-museum/83910/ Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The architect Richard Meier says his work has fallen victim to Italian politics and a government that is hostile toward contemporary art. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government last month announced plans for tearing down part of the Ara Pacis Museum designed by Mr. Meier as a home for an altar constructed in 9 B.C.E. to commemorate the peace following Rome's Gallic and Spanish campaigns. The plan to construct the first modern building in Rome's center since the Fascist era drew criticism... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/serra-gamble-cost-guggenheim-62m/83919/ Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The Guggenheim Bilbao lost roughly $6.2 million in government funds when it purchased Richard Serra's monumental sculpture installation, "The Matter of Time" (2005), in dollars rather than euros, the Art Newspaper reported Thursday. The museum paid for the Serra installation in three installments, which totaled more than $20 million, in 2004 and 2005. A spokeswoman told the Art Newspaper that the museum entered into what is called a "forward exchange contract," betting that the dollar would... MAUREEN MULLARKEY http://www.nysun.com/arts/music-and-folk-art-shine-in-kandinskys-munich/83879/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was the beckoning priest of an aestheticized, secular spirituality that has become the fallback position for agnostics with a yen for transcendence. A display from the Guggenheim's permanent collection showcases Kandinsky's early work produced in Munich between 1903 and 1911, the year he published "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." Kandinsky came to painting late. Born into a wealthy, aristocratic Russian family, he began his studies in law at the University of... JOHN GOODRICH http://www.nysun.com/arts/original-copies-the-art-of-appropriation-at-moma/83818/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Pipe, glass, bottle of rum: Spoken aloud, the words have the beat of a carnival barker's cry or a drummer's rim shot. Connected to Picasso, they conjure charging lines and unlikely angles that somehow coalesce as tangible objects. It's this genius for design that makes Picasso a legitimate heir to masters such as Cézanne and Goya, but his work fascinates, too, for its extraordinarily inventive use of materials. Around 1912, when Picasso and Braque pioneered the practice of incorporating into... DANIEL KUNITZ http://www.nysun.com/arts/painting-pushes-its-limits/83816/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST "Painting: Now and Forever, Part II," a group show occupying both the Matthew Marks and Greene Naftali galleries, refers back to a survey of contemporary painting (Part I) held a decade ago at Marks and the now defunct Pat Hearn Gallery. At the time, when painting was considerably more embattled and the market for it much smaller, the show's title rang defiant; today, it sounds ironic. Part II explores a medium — or approach, since the paint is often absent here — in a state of productive... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/sothebys-will-move-asian-auctions-to-hong-kong/83809/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Sotheby's said it will cease holding auctions of Asian Contemporary art in New York and "consolidate" them instead in Hong Kong, with biannual sales in the Asian city. Sotheby's said it will organize dedicated auctions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian art in April and October in Hong Kong, starting next year. Its September 17 sale of such Asian works in New York will be its last in the city, a Hong Kong-based Sotheby's spokeswoman, Rhonda Yung, said in an interview Wednesday... FRANCIS MORRONE http://www.nysun.com/arts/changing-times-changing-notions-progress-at/83813/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST As crowds throng the Whitney Museum of American Art to see "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe," curators Donna De Salvo and Gary Carrion-Murayari had the bright idea to pull from the museum's permanent collection a number of works that could serve as a pendant to Fuller's technological utopianism. "Progress," on view through November 30, exhibits varied artists' works that speak in some way to our changing notions of scientific, technological, political, and artistic progress. The... DAVID COHEN http://www.nysun.com/arts/british-modernisms-triple-threat/83812/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST LONDON — Wyndham Lewis was the "triple threat" of British Modernism: He was accomplished — and innovative — as the writer of linguistically dazzling satires such as "The Apes of God" and "Tarr." He was as an abstract artist who led the pioneering Vorticist group just prior to World War I. And, as a bracing exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London shows, he was a portrait artist of the first degree. Whether his subjects were literary lions, patrons, lovers, or himself, he painted... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/sothebys-to-follow-hirst-sale-with-ica-auction/83626/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST A Sotheby's auction — in which an unprecedented amount of art that has come straight from an Damien Hirst's studio will be sold — will precede another sale by London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. On September 15 and 16, Sotheby's will be holding Mr. Hirst's "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" sale, which is expected to fetch $125 million, according to the New York-based auction house. A month later, during the week of the Frieze Art Fair, Sotheby's will be selling more new works by Mr. Hirst... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/nea-expands-indemnity-program/83637/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The National Endowment for the Arts is expanding the 30-year-old Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program, so that in the future it will cover domestic as well as international loans, the NEA announced. The program spares museums the cost of privately insuring against loss of or damage to art that they borrow, by extending indemnity agreements backed by the U.S. Treasury. In the past, the program has only applied to international loans of art. Now, art borrowed from American collections will also... Staff Reporter of the Sun http://www.nysun.com/arts/lacma-to-acquire-photo-collection/83638/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will purchase the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, a selection of more than 3,500 photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, the museum announced Monday. Highlights of the collection include photographs by Ansel Adams, Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, W.H. Fox Talbot, and Edward Weston. An exhibition titled "A Story of Photography: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection," featuring works from the collection, will open October 5. The... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/new-york-vs-hong-kong-at-skyscraper-museum/83644/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST For many tourists, the first order of business on their maiden visit to Manhattan is to overcome a slight sense of disappointment. Rather than seeing the endless avenues of ultra-modern skyscrapers that they were promised, they are greeted by old-fashioned neighborhoods of unremarkable height, whose size and rhythms have more in common with the Old World than with that mechanized metropolis that haunted the dreams of the modernists. There is, however, one city, literally on the other side of... Associated Press http://www.nysun.com/arts/memorial-honoring-black-patriots-stalls/83565/ Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Most accounts of the Revolutionary War give the impression that America's independence from Britain was won by brave white men. Maurice Barboza wants to tell the rest of the story. He's trying to revive an effort to build the first monument on the National Mall honoring black Colonial soldiers — perhaps the most forgotten heroes from the nation's birth. The project would recognize such people as Crispus Attucks, the first patriot killed in the Boston Massacre, and James Lafayette, a Virginia... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/three-friends-start-a-gallery-with-a-little-help/83433/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Most college students looking for a summer job in New York and interested in learning about the art market might try to get an internship at a gallery. But Genevieve Hudson-Price, Sabrina Blaichman, and Caroline Copley had a better idea: Instead of interning at a gallery, they decided to start one. Their gallery, called 7Eleven Gallery, in reference both to the address (711 Washington St.) and, Ms. Copley said, to "our society's consumerism," opened June 26 and will close in the fall. Their... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-serendipitous-art-space/83434/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The display in the window at 259-275 Tenth Ave. is intriguing but vexing: There is no clear way to enter the space and no indication of what's behind the glass, beyond a small card noting the artist's name (Denise Kupferschmidt), the title of the work, "This and That: My Grandmother's Cabinet, or Mary Jean in Maputo," and the date the installation made its debut. The window is curated by a former director of the Zach Feuer Gallery, Lumi Tan. The building's owner, Douglas Oliver, originally... CATHERINE HICKLEY http://www.nysun.com/arts/art-in-revamped-berlin-bunker/83432/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST How does an advertising entrepreneur spend the fortune he's amassed by the age of 40? Purchase a yacht, or perhaps even a tropical island? Not Christian Boros. He bought a World War II bomb shelter in Berlin with 6-foot-thick concrete walls and clanking metal doors. He then spent five years converting it into an exhibition center for his Contemporary art collection and a home for his family. "The reason I bought it was not because I wanted a bunker, but because I wanted somewhere to put my... DANIEL KUNITZ http://www.nysun.com/arts/wiley-conquers-the-world-stage/83425/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST When Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977) began exhibiting his portraits of young African-American males some five years ago, they hit a cultural sweet spot, bringing a hip-hop swagger into the gallery, and propelling the Yale-trained artist to international renown. But these large oils were not just photo-realist pictures of black men in hoodies and baggy jeans: They had a sophisticated conceptual underpinning, which only further endeared them to critics and collectors. Mr. Wiley had asked his models to... WILLIAM MEYERS http://www.nysun.com/arts/summer-shows-asako-narahashi-the-good-life/83319/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Yossi Milo's current exhibition, "Asako Narahashi: half awake and half asleep in the water," is an appropriately refreshing summertime show. As the title implies, a large part of each of the nine C-prints on display is taken up by water. Ms. Narahashi (b. 1959 in Tokyo) uses a commonplace Nikonos 35 mm waterproof camera and a set procedure. She floats chest deep in the waters of inland lakes or off the coast of Japan with the camera pointed toward the shore and shoots without using the... LANCE ESPLUND http://www.nysun.com/arts/natural-beauty-unnatural-balance/83321/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The most profound investigation by an artist into the world of plants is Paul Klee's "The Nature of Nature," the second of his posthumously published two-volume Bauhaus teaching notebooks. Klee's notebooks, the first of which is "The Thinking Eye," are no substitute for his art. They do, however, provide entrance into the metaphors, processes, and structures of abstract painting. In "The Nature of Nature," Klee, a cosmologist as much as a botanist, analyzes the world not to describe nature but... DANIEL KUNITZ http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-twins-of-the-rec-room-os-gemeos/83323/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Os Gemeos — "the twins," in Portuguese — is the nom de plume of the twin Brazilian artists Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo (b. 1974) of São Paulo, Brazil. Their work borrows the idioms of outsider and folk art in a style heavily influenced by the one-time graffiti artist Barry McGee. And though, like Mr. McGee, they might once have been artists of the street, their gallery-sized installation at Deitch Projects, "Too Far Too Close," suggests they have since become artists of the rec room. The show... ALIX FINKELSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/elizabeth-peytons-portraits-of-pretty-things/83327/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Elizabeth Peyton is best known for her facile portraits of famous people. Although the 43-year-old artist sometimes works in black and white, most of her paintings, drawings, and prints are suffused with sensuous color: throbbing reds, luminous blues, and dusky purples that she juxtaposes against wan skin tones and feverish red lips. Ms. Peyton favors young men as subject matter, and has increasingly turned to her own intimate circle of hipsters and artists for models, individuals who are... DAVID COHEN http://www.nysun.com/arts/hopper-cityscapes-prior-to-the-paint/83325/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST As this gem of an exhibition on the Upper East Side demonstrates, Edward Hopper found himself in etching. For the first 18 years of his career, unable to support himself by painting, Hopper was obliged to work as a commercial illustrator. He worked for various New York advertising agencies, and enjoyed a short stint on the New Masses, the socialist paper whose art editor was his friend and, to some extent, mentor, John Sloan. Printmaking presented itself as a natural corollary to his day job... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/an-allegory-to-vindicate-arcimboldo/83326/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted many interesting works, but few really good ones. That is one of the reasons for which this 16th-century Lombard master is held in scant regard by the more discerning critics of Old Master painting. Another reason, to be frank, is that people who don't like painting often like Arcimboldo. Their affection is a consequence of the defining weirdness of his career — his fashioning of human portraits from such extravagant composites as fruits, books, timber, and eels. Nor... NELL GLUCKMAN http://www.nysun.com/arts/summer-gallery-shows-attract-a-different-crowd/83178/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST For galleries in New York, the summer season is notoriously slow. Major clients relocate to their second homes outside the city, leaving their collections stagnant for a few months while Chelsea swells with tourists. Though group shows keep the gallery walls filled with current work, dealers also take the opportunity to flex their curatorial muscle and experiment with creative marketing techniques. David Findlay Jr. Fine Art hosts its annual Summerset show, featuring the work of 27 of the... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/dramatic-beguiling/83161/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Three years ago, the Lucida was little more than a notion. Six months ago it was a mere skeleton, and now, fully fleshed out, it surveys the southeast corner of Lexington Avenue as one of the more notable residential structures to rise in Manhattan in some time. The Lucida is not like most of the residential buildings that have arisen in Manhattan in recent years. A massive undertaking that occupies fully half of the block that stretches between Lexington and Third avenues and between 86th and... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/new-german-agency-dedicated-to-art-restitution/83176/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST German museums are harboring hundreds of artworks looted by the Nazis and will face further claims for restitution from victims and their heirs, said Uwe Hartmann, the head of a new government agency charged with researching the provenance of art in public collections. Museums have returned more than 1,000 objects looted by the Nazis in 63 restitution cases since 1998, Mr. Hartmann said Monday. His agency, brought to life by Culture Minister Bernd Neumann, has an annual budget of $1.56 million... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/oases-of-color/83047/ Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Some big gods appear in a small form in a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Early Buddhist Manuscript Painting: The Palm-Leaf Tradition." Unlike contemporaneous Islamic art, which generally abhorred the depiction of any living thing, let alone a deity, the indigenous traditions of India, Nepal, and Tibet saw nothing at all amiss in placing their idols on a surface scarcely larger than a postage stamp. But Prince Hamlet once famously opined that "I could be bounded in a nutshell... LANCE ESPLUND http://www.nysun.com/arts/evening-in-berlin/82977/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Museum of Modern Art's extensive, world-class collection, not to mention its lending and borrowing powers, enables it to mount small, concentrated shows devoted to subjects most museums could never dream of. A year ago, MoMA dreamed up "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at 100." This fall, the museum will bring us "Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night," which will center on "The Starry Night," one of the hallmarks of MoMA's permanent collection. Van Gogh's twilight and nighttime works are a great... JOHN GOODRICH http://www.nysun.com/arts/totally-rad-the-irony-and-agony-of-the-80s-art/82920/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST In midsummer, when many galleries wrap up the season with group shows, Paul Kasmin Gallery is adding a welcome twist to an old routine. "Totally Rad" combines works by several gallery artists with significant additional paintings, sculptures, and photographs to offer a plangent sampling of New York art from the "go-go 80s." The decade of the 1980s saw the resurgence of painting and conceptual art under hyphenated labels ("Neo-Expressionism," "Neo-Conceptualism," "Neo-Geo") that reflected the... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-fresh-view-of-vitruvius/82921/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Recently, a series of eight drawings, dating to the middle of the 16th century and illustrating the text of Vitruvius, came up for sale at a small auction house at Oxford. These were promptly purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and are now on view in the galleries. The curators of the Met are confident, on the basis of drawing style and handwriting, that these works derive from the Sangallo circle, a dynasty of Florentine architects who also built elsewhere in Italy in the first half... MAUREEN MULLARKEY http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-feast-of-loathings-tetsumi-kudo/82923/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Ogden Nash never saw the sculpture of Tetsumi Kudo (1935-90), never read his pensées. Even so, he would have known how to approach this installation at Andrea Rosen Gallery. Nash appreciated the justice of malice toward some: "Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, / But hating, my boy, is an art." Organized and curated by collector Joshua Mack, this exhibition is a feast of loathings. There is the unlovely work itself plus the artist's antirational epistemology that earns it the tag... ALIX FINKELSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/crossing-the-line-a-year-in-drawing/82922/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Any artist engaged in graphic expression must contend with the creative dissonance between the controlling hand and the unruly line. "A Year in Drawing," now on view at Galerie Lelong, gives us a generous sampling of recent works on paper by 16 Contemporary artists. It is fascinating to view and compare their diverging approaches to the conundrums of drawing; while some artists willingly share creative authority with the line, others insist on absolute control. And with what is surely a knowing... KATE TAYLOR http://www.nysun.com/arts/overlooked-at-christies/82729/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The Metropolitan Museum of Art's purchase of a previously unknown drawing by the Netherlandish artist Lucas van Leyden is a coup for the museum and its visitors, but something of an embarrassment for Christie's, whose specialists overlooked the drawing when it was sold there in 2005. The 16th-century drawing, depicting the Archangel Gabriel, was sold at a sale of "Maritime Pictures and Watercolours" at Christie's South Kensington in June 2005. It was included in an album of landscape sketches... JAY AKASIE http://www.nysun.com/arts/prints-at-studio-prices/82688/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST What does $2,000 get you in the art market today? More than you might think. At Christie's mid-season print sale on Thursday, many pieces have estimates that resemble the price of the monthly rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. "What's appealing to many people about a mid-season print sale is that the price range is for the most part below $5,000 a print," a specialist in the print department at Christie's, Tudor Davies, said. And the names of the artists are good ones. A number of... Bloomberg News http://www.nysun.com/arts/sainsbury-pledges-2m-to-soane-museum/82580/ Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Charitable trusts endowed by the late Simon Sainsbury and Paul Getty are giving $2.2 million to the Sir John Soane's Museum, bringing the London attraction closer to its $12 million fund-raising goal after the British lottery refused a grant request. The Monument Trust, funded by Sainsbury, has pledged $2 million toward the museum's planned revamp, which would open up rooms and boost visitor access, the museum said in a release issued for a press presentation. The J. Paul Getty Jr. Charitable... JAMES GARDNER http://www.nysun.com/arts/chaos-and-danger-in-architectural-design/82534/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST In the evolution of the 20th-century city, New York played a crucial role. Gotham haunted the imagination of everyone from John Dos Passos and H.G. Wells to Le Corbusier and the German Expressionist director Fritz Lang. A man-made colossus, it embodied in its concrete grid and in the tidal migrations of its pedestrians the very spirit and rhythm of the modern age. By now, that affinity is so well known as to seem platitudinous. Less well known is that, half a century later, with the dawn of... LANCE ESPLUND http://www.nysun.com/arts/before-during-after-the-fall-durer-at-mobia/82509/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The German painter, printmaker, draftsman, graphic designer, typographer, and art theorist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was unhappily married. Erwin Panofsky, in his unsurpassed monograph on the artist, reminds us that this fact, though it may seem trivial, illuminates Dürer's importance to the Northern Renaissance. Dürer's wife, "Agnes Frey," Panofsky writes, "thought that the man she had married was a painter in the late medieval sense, an honest craftsman who produced pictures as a tailor made... STEPHEN MAINE http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-delicious-paradox/82503/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A hidden gem of a summer group show now on view at Gary Snyder's recently inaugurated Project Space offers the delicious paradox of a tightly curated exhibition attesting to the fecund sprawl of contemporary abstract painting. The show's title implies that no single modifier of "abstraction" will suffice to characterize a currently dominant trend; reductive, gestural, and hard-edge proclivities are represented by accomplished mid-career painters. As always, more interesting than genre...